A U.S. Internet company pulled the plug on the websites of a Canadian extremist today after receiving a complaint from CanadaÂ’s Attorney-General.One of the websites taken down by Arizona-based web host Go Daddy had been used by Salman Hossain of Mississauga to call for a genocide of the Jewish community. The other was a new site that was not yet on-line.
“Go Daddy received a complaint from Canada’s Attorney-General regarding the domain names in question,” said Ben Butler, the company’s Director of Network Abuse. “After reviewing the content on the sites, Go Daddy determined they are in direct violation of our terms of service and have been removed from our network.”
On July 8, Ontario Provincial Police charged Mr. Hossain, 25, with three counts of promoting hatred and two counts of advocating genocide. The charges were approved by Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley. But because he had left Canada before the police investigation was completed, Mr. Hossain remains at large and, until yesterday, he had continued to advocate racist violence on his website.
In his final post before the site went off-line, Mr. Hossain wrote that “the Jews” were pressuring Go Daddy to take down his website but that he was in the process of moving it to another site.
“Like I stated earlier, it makes very little difference if they try and take down the server as I am moving it to another country’s server where it will be much more difficult to take down and where they really and truly hate Jews. So therefore, in either case the Jews have lost and they should go shoot themselves in the head for trying to bring down the information that I have against them.”
But the National Post was able to locate that new server in Carlow, Ireland. Contacted by the Post, the web hosting company, Blacknight, quickly cancelled its agreement with Mr. HossainÂ’s new website.
“The content on that website would be illegal in Ireland and in Europe,” said Blacknight spokesman Michele Neylon. “And as far as our legal counsel is concerned, any website content that incites anybody to murder another human being, be that an individual or mass genocide, would be illegal.”
He said the company’s terms of service include a clause about “illegal” websites. “So on those grounds we have terminated services for that website even before it actually was hosted with us fully, so we will not be providing services to the gentleman in question.”
Mr. Hossain is a Bangladeshi-Canadian who says he was raised partly in Ghana before immigrating to Toronto. He describes himself as “a regular Muslim supporting the jihad overseas” and a friend of the Toronto 18 terrorists who plotted bombings in southern Ontario.
Over the past three years, he has openly called for terrorist attacks in Canada, cheered the killing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan and urged fellow Muslims to “exterminate” Canada’s Jewish population. With headlines such as “The Jews and the West must be nuked” and “The destruction of the West is the only way to exterminate the Jews,” the website calls on Muslims to organize an invasion of Canada to overthrown the government and “slaughter” Canada’s Jews.
The Canadian Jewish Congress, which had also sent a complaint to Go Daddy, said it would make sure that Mr. Hossain would not find a new home on the Internet. “We will be a thorn in his side,” said CEO Bernie Farber. He said the group would notify Internet servers of Mr. Hossain’s status as a fugitive who is wanted for hate crimes. “Any reasonable corporate citizen, once they see exactly what this man is saying, wants nothing to do with him,” Mr. Farber said. “Nobody wants to be associated with such a horrible, disgusting person.”